Virtual reality has brought us to places ranging from the bottom of the ocean to the surface of Mars. But as good as VR is, it’s never been quite as real as, well… real life. Google Cardboard Plastic, launching today, changes all that. It’s our latest step toward truly immersive technology—a new viewer that lets you see, touch, smell and hear the world just like you do in real life.

Cardboard Plastic is the world’s first actual reality headset, complete with 4D integrated perspective, 360° spatially accurate sound, 20/20 resolution, and advanced haptics for realistic touch sensations. Expertly crafted from polymethyl methacrylate, Cardboard Plastic is lightweight, waterproof, and engineered to last a lifetime—no batteries, no wires. And unlike other VR headsets, it integrates seamlessly into your life—so you’ll never miss a thing. Unless you blink.

Last year, we opened the doors to the music landmark Abbey Road Studios, where musical legends like the Beatles and Pink Floyd have recorded. With a click of a mouse or a tap of a screen, more than 2 million fans from around the world have stepped Inside Abbey Road to explore the famous studios. Now you can go even further and experience what it actually feels like—and sounds like—inside the studios, using Google Cardboard and your smartphone.

To get this virtual reality experience, download the app on Android (iOS coming soon), then start your journey with a nine-part guided tour narrated by Giles Martin, the son of the late Beatles producer, George Martin, who shares the history of the studios from the 1930’s to present day.

After the tour, you can quite literally move around the studios at your leisure to see hidden treasures like Studio 3’s Mirrored Drum Room, where the mirrors help to create a close, bright and loud sound quality. Uncover one of Abbey Road's Mastering Suites, where a record gets its finishing touches before a release. In Studio 1, experience what it’s like to be in a recording session with the London Symphony Orchestra with surround sound.

With Inside Abbey Road for Cardboard, you can get even closer to the history, stories and innovation of the most famous music studios in the world.

Remember the last time you went on a trip or had a fun weekend? You probably took photos and videos—lots of them—but didn’t do much beyond posting a couple on social media. Maybe you thought about making an album to share with your family or friends, but picking out the best photos and organizing them can feel as fun as unpacking your suitcase—so more often than not, they just sit on your phone or computer.

Starting today, after an event or trip, Google Photos will suggest a new album for you, curated with just your best shots. It’ll also add maps to show how far you traveled and location pins to remember where you went—because it's not always easy to recall the late-night diner you hit on your road trip, or which campsite you pitched the tent in when arriving after dark.

You can add text captions to the album to describe the view from the small hill huge mountain you climbed, and turn on collaboration to let others add their own photos. Or if you want to create one yourself, any existing album can now be customized with maps, location pins, and text. Voilà: You have a beautiful album ready to share.

This new album experience is rolling out today on Android, iOS, and the web. We’re taking the best of stories and bringing them to albums, so your adventures are easier to browse, edit, collaborate on, and share.

To address challenges at this scale, we need creative solutions—both to raise awareness for these issues, and create new interventions to meet local needs. So this World Water Day, we want to highlight a handful of organizations who are using technologies—like virtual reality, data analysis, and mapping—to make a difference.

Documenting impact with 360 video
The nonprofit organization charity:water uses the power of crowd-fundraising to build wells in communities with limited access to clean water. Since 2006, they’ve funded more than 19,000 water projects in 24 countries that will serve more than 6 million people. Three years ago, Google.org gave charity:water a US$5 million grant to build well sensors that notify local mechanics of the need for repair—helping ensure ongoing access to clean water and creating new local jobs.

Today, charity:water is releasing The Sourceon YouTube 360, a virtual reality film that documents the before-and-after impact of one of these well projects in Ethiopia.

To view the video in 360, press play and use the arrows on the cursor in the upper left-hand corner to look up, down, right and left.

Mapping our waterways with Street View in Google Maps
With California in its worst drought in recorded history, the need to understand and manage the state’s rivers, lakes, and watersheds is acute. Environmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy, California and the Freshwater Trust have borrowed the Street View Trekker—used as a backpack and mounted on a kayak—to capture 360-degree imagery. These images are useful in many ways; for The Nature Conservancy, the data will provide baseline imagery to compare forest growth and regrowth over time. The Freshwater Trust is using the imagery to validate their scientific models of the river, and prioritize areas for restoration, such as planting of native plant species along the banks.

The Freshwater Trust scientist guides the Trekker-mounted kayak down the Russian River, capturing 360-degree imagery as he floats. Photo Credit: Brian Kelley of The Freshwater Trust.

Monitoring clean water with sensors
When it comes to water contamination in rural areas, collecting reliable data is often one of the biggest challenges. In 2014, a nonprofit called Associacao O Eco won the Google Impact Challenge: Brazil with a proposal for a data-collection project called InfoAmazonia. The project will deploy a network of sensors that send a text message to local citizens and officials if contamination is detected. In the next phase of the project, the organization plans to create an open-source toolkit and citizen-led initiative that enables local people to install these sensors, understand their own data, and advocate for a cleaner water supply.

Two members of the InfoAmazonia team install the Mãe d´água sensor in one of the communities in Santarém, Pará, Brazil.Water tracking with satellites
Between 2011-2012, Africa endured its worst drought in 50 years. Without water, crop failures have lead to malnourishment and displacement across the region. To help with the relief efforts, we gave a grant to the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) for satellite imaging technologies to assess crop availability, monitor water quality in Lakes Victoria and Malawi, and provide data for an early warning system for floods and fires.

The near real-time data capture has helped local officials make informed decisions about managing water resources, and addressing food security in the region.

Examples of data and imagery collected through the satellite system.Help raise awareness on water issues
This year, water nonprofit Drop4Drop is asking people to complete the sentence “W is for…” in order to raise awareness for the global clean water crisis. To us, “W is for... Water organizations using tech to make an impact.” The solutions to the world’s water challenges are complex, and some will take years to achieve. These organizations are applying technology to these challenges in new and unique ways, and we’re glad to play a small part.

We encourage you to write your own “W is for…” post and use the hashtag #W4Water to join the conversation on social media.

Today’s blog post is by the winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition, 10th grader Akilah Johnson. Given the contest’s theme—“What makes me...me”—who better than the young artist herself to answer that question? - Ed.

When I was younger, I attended Roots Public Charter School and Roots Activity Learning Center in Northwest Washington, D.C. These schools promote a strong connection to African heritage, and an Afrocentric lifestyle; we regularly celebrated important African American people and I learned a lot about my history as an African American. As I grew older, I realized that the black people that came before us have made us into what we are today. So of course I had to include them in my doodle on the theme “What makes me...me.”

My goal with my art was to not only turn heads but souls as well—not only for someone to see it and be amazed by it but also to have them understand and connect with it. My drawing explores childhood themes and then moves into reflections on our society. Everything surrounding the word "Google" depicts my characteristics. Of all the things I chose to include, the six most special to me are the Symbol of Life (the ankh), the African continent, where everything began for me and my ancestors, the Eye of Horus, the word "power" drawn in black, the woman's fist based on one of my favorite artist’s works, and the D.C. flag—because I’m a Washingtonian at heart and I love my city with everything in me!

I've always been encouraged to pursue art, especially by my teachers—first Baba Camera from Roots, and now my art teacher Zalika Perkins. But participating in Doodle 4 Google gave me an understanding of why art matters and why MY art matters—because it speaks to people. No matter our differences, everyone is touched by art in some way. Winning this competition opened my eyes to the many types of art and the many ways it can resonate with people. I’m excited to keep creating art that matters.

Go isn’t just a game—it’s a living, breathing culture of players, analysts, fans, and legends. Over the last 10 days in Seoul, South Korea, we’ve been lucky enough to witness some of that incredible excitement firsthand. We've also had the chance to see something that's never happened before: DeepMind's AlphaGo took on and defeated legendary Go player, Lee Sedol (9-dan professional with 18 world titles), marking a major milestone for artificial intelligence.

Pedestrians checking in on the AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol Go match on the streets of Seoul (March 13)

Go may be one of the oldest games in existence, but the attention to our five-game tournament exceeded even our wildest imaginations. Searches for Go rules and Go boards spiked in the U.S. In China, tens of millions watched live streams of the matches, and the “Man vs. Machine Go Showdown” hashtag saw 200 million pageviews on Sina Weibo. Sales of Go boards even surged in Korea.

Our public test of AlphaGo, however, was about more than winning at Go. We founded DeepMind in 2010 to create general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) that can learn on its own—and, eventually, be used as a tool to help society solve some of its biggest and most pressing problems, from climate change to disease diagnosis.

Like many researchers before us, we've been developing and testing our algorithms through games. We first revealed AlphaGo in January—the first AI program that could beat a professional player at the most complex board game mankind has devised, using deep learning and reinforcement learning. The ultimate challenge was for AlphaGo to take on the best Go player of the past decade—Lee Sedol.

To everyone's surprise, including ours, AlphaGo won four of the five games. Commentators noted that AlphaGo played many unprecedented, creative, and even “beautiful” moves. Based on our data, AlphaGo’s bold move 37 in Game 2 had a 1 in 10,000 chance of being played by a human. Lee countered with innovative moves of his own, such as his move 78 against AlphaGo in Game 4—again, a 1 in 10,000 chance of being played—which ultimately resulted in a win.

The final score was 4-1. We're contributing the $1 million in prize money to organizations that support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and Go, as well as UNICEF.

We’ve learned two important things from this experience. First, this test bodes well for AI’s potential in solving other problems. AlphaGo has the ability to look “globally” across a board—and find solutions that humans either have been trained not to play or would not consider. This has huge potential for using AlphaGo-like technology to find solutions that humans don’t necessarily see in other areas. Second, while the match has been widely billed as "man vs. machine," AlphaGo is really a human achievement. Lee Sedol and the AlphaGo team both pushed each other toward new ideas, opportunities and solutions—and in the long run that's something we all stand to benefit from.

But as they say about Go in Korean: “Don’t be arrogant when you win or you’ll lose your luck.” This is just one small, albeit significant, step along the way to making machines smart. We’ve demonstrated that our cutting edge deep reinforcement learning techniques can be used to make strong Go and Atari players. Deep neural networks are already used at Google for specific tasks—like image recognition, speech recognition, and Search ranking. However, we’re still a long way from a machine that can learn to flexibly perform the full range of intellectual tasks a human can—the hallmark of true artificial general intelligence.

Demis and Lee Sedol hold up the signed Go board from the Google DeepMind Challenge Match

With this tournament, we wanted to test the limits of AlphaGo. The genius of Lee Sedol did that brilliantly—and we’ll spend the next few weeks studying the games he and AlphaGo played in detail. And because the machine learning methods we’ve used in AlphaGo are general purpose, we hope to apply some of these techniques to other challenges in the future. Game on!

Posted by Demis Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of DeepMindhttps://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a27p6yLqBd8/VurhIGm54SI/AAAAAAAASDo/0G9b_3wci5UBPcXbf5W64veSZCGximD5Q/s320/A26U5144.jpgDemis HassabisCEO and Co-FounderDeepMind

With spring around the corner, it’s time to look forward to sunnier skies—and summer getaways. These days, mobile phones make it easier than ever for you to sneak in vacation dreaming and planning here and there—in line at the coffee shop, waiting at the doctor’s office, or on your way to meet a friend.

In fact, last year, according to our internal data for google.com, we saw a whopping 50 percent increase in travel-related questions on mobile phones. But even as that number grows, it can be hard to get all the right information in one place on a small screen. There are a dizzying number of questions to answer when planning a trip: What are the best places to visit? What time of year is good to go? What kind of prices can I expect?

Today we’re introducing something to make all this easier: Destinations on Google, which helps you discover and plan your next vacation, right from Google Search on your phone.

Here’s how it works:

Search with Google on your mobile phone for the continent, country, or state you’d like to travel to and add the word “destination” to see an easy-to-browse collection of options. Destinations integrates a deep understanding of all the places in the world with Google Flights and Hotel search, so you can see available flight and hotel prices instantly. So instead of jumping between a dozen links or tabs to get the information you need, you can sit back and scroll—and leave the heavy lifting to us.
To find a vacation that’s just your style, search for a destination and something you’d like to do there, like “spain surfing,” “new zealand hiking,” or “colorado skiing.” We’ll suggest spots that fit with your hobbies and interests.
Say you’re planning to take some time off in June or July, but you haven’t decided exactly when to go. The “Flexible Dates” filter lets you refine your results by month, so you can see when fares and rates are lowest within the time range you want, across multiple destinations.
Want to avoid crowds or bad weather? Select any destination and tap the “Explore” tab to see what the weather is like year-round and when your destination is most popular, based on historic visits from other travelers.
Once you've selected a destination, tap "Plan a trip" to see rates for hotels and flights. We show you highs and lows for the next six months, so you can find the right price tag for you. And as you slide left or right, the results instantly update with real-time fares and rates, pulling from the trillions of flight itineraries and hotels we price every day on Google Flights and Hotel search. You can also tap the pencil icon to customize results further with flight and hotel preferences, including number of stops, hotel class, and number of travelers.
Whether you’ve got five days or 12, don’t fret about figuring out where to go first or which spots you can’t miss. Simply search for “Spain travel,” and click the blue arrow icon to browse the most frequently traveled itineraries. The suggested itineraries are based on historic visits by other travelers to those places, so you can use the wisdom of the crowd and save time researching.
Let Destinations on Google make it smooth sailing to your next vacation. Bon voyage!

Over the years, Doodles have commemorated the achievements of women in science, civil rights, journalism, sports, arts, technology and beyond. It’s always an honor to pay tribute to women who have changed the course of history, sometimes in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But for this year’s International Women’s Day, we wanted to celebrate the Doodle-worthy women of the future. So we gathered our cameras and pencils and visited 13 countries where we asked 337 women and girls to complete the sentence, “One day I will…” This is what they told us:

Our video Doodle was created by three women on the Doodle team (Liat Ben-Rafael, Lydia Nichols, and Helene Leroux) and features original music by Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs).

From toddlers to grandmothers, the women in San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Lagos, Moscow, Cairo, Berlin, London, Paris, Jakarta, Bangkok, New Delhi and Tokyo all sparkled with personality. Each new city brought more “One day I will”s, more signature dance moves, more hugs, more high-fives. The aspirations we heard were as varied as the women and girls who shared them, from the very personal—swim with pigs in the Bahamas—to the very global—give a voice to those who can’t speak—and everything in between. When it was done, we found that our own “One day I will…”s had grown bigger and richer, inspired by the women we’d met.

Even women who are already accomplished aren’t done dreaming. Jane Goodall shared her hope to one day discuss the environment with the Pope, while Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai and activist Muzoon Almellehan continue to work fearlessly toward a future where every girl can go to school.

In most filming locations we worked with a female-only crew to help create a celebratory and encouraging environment. To see more from all our locations, see the 12 city videos on g.co/iwd.

It’s not always easy to put into words what you want to achieve. When we asked women and girls on the street to articulate their aspirations, they often had to pause and think about it for a few minutes. Whether their responses were detailed or broad strokes, concrete or abstract, funny or heartwarming, it was inspiring to see them take the time to dream.

Now it’s your turn. Share your aspiration with #OneDayIWill and get one step closer to where you’re going. You never know, you could be the subject of a doodle yourself someday...

Posted by Lydia Nichols and Liat Ben-Rafael, Doodle Team https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J0C1J-iD_Ww/VuCNg4b0VLI/AAAAAAAASB4/ztl_odgWUrY/s1600/IWD_B.jpg Lydia Nichols and Liat Ben-RafaelDoodle Team

Right now, 16 private teams from around the world are in a race to the moon. They’re in a $30 million competition called the Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), which challenges teams to design and build a rover, land it on the surface of the moon, drive it 500 meters across the lunar landscape, and send HD video and imagery back to Earth by the end of 2017. And soon, you’ll be able to learn their stories in a new digital documentary series from Google, Academy Award®-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel, Executive Producer J.J. Abrams, Bad Robot, and Epic Digital.

The GLXP competition, which started in 2007, aims to kick off a new era of space exploration by enabling low-cost and efficient access to the moon. Not only is the moon our closest neighbor in space, it’s also the gateway to exploring the rest of the universe—and provides opportunities for discovery in the fields of science, technology, and human habitation.

The teams in the competition come from all walks of life, from Silicon Valley tech experts, to hackers in Germany, to IT specialists in India, to a father and son working out of their their Vancouver apartment. In a series of 9 digital documentaries, Moon Shot goes behind the scenes with each team, bringing to life their challenges, sacrifices, quirks, and most importantly, the reasons why they’re making the 238,900 mile journey to the moon.

But unlike many other global pandemics, the spread of Zika has been harder to identify, map and contain. It’s believed that 4 in 5 people with the virus don’t show any symptoms, and the primary transmitter for the disease, the Aedes mosquito species, is both widespread and challenging to eliminate. That means that fighting Zika requires raising awareness on how people can protect themselves, as well as supporting organizations who can help drive the development of rapid diagnostics and vaccines. We also have to find better ways to visualize the threat so that public health officials and NGO’s can support communities at risk.

As a company whose mission is helping people find information, with a lot of experience in analyzing large sets of data, we’re in a good position to help—at scale and at speed. So today we have Google engineers working with UNICEF to analyze data to determine how to map and anticipate the virus. We’ve also made some updates to our products to make Zika information more accessible, and we’re providing UNICEF with a $1 million grant to help their efforts on the ground.

Mapping information to help with prevention
A volunteer team of Google engineers, designers, and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a platform to process data from different sources (i.e., weather and travel patterns) in order to visualize potential outbreaks. Ultimately, the goal of this open source platform is to identify the risk of Zika transmission for different regions and help UNICEF, governments and NGO’s decide how and where to focus their time and resources. This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response, but will also be applicable to future emergencies.

Google software engineers John Li and Zora Tung with UNICEF research scientist Manuel Garcia Herranz and UX designer Tanya Bhandari working on the open source data platform.

Supporting UNICEF’s efforts to combat Zika
Our $1 million grant will be used by UNICEF to raise widespread awareness, reduce mosquito populations, support the development of diagnostics and vaccines, and work with communities and governments to prevent Zika transmission. The organization expects to reach 200 million affected or vulnerable people in Brazil and throughout Latin America with these efforts.

We’ve also launched a matching campaign for Google employees, aimed at providing an additional $500,000 to UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to support their work on the ground.

Making Zika virus information accessible
We already include robust information for 900+ health conditions directly on Search for people in the U.S. We’ve now also added extensive information about Zika globally in 16 languages, with an overview of the virus, symptom information, and Public Health Alerts from that can be updated with new information as it becomes available.

We’re also working with popular YouTube creators across Latin America, including Sesame Street and Brazilian physician Drauzio Varella, to raise awareness about Zika prevention via their channels.

We hope these efforts are helpful in fighting this new public health emergency, and we will continue to do our part to help combat this outbreak.

And if you’re curious about what that 3,000 percent search increase looks like, take a look: